Friday cat-blogging

I'm breaking the order of my cat-blogging and taking a short break from the saga of Mommy Kitty the 2nd and her progeny this week to visit my oldest friend.

In late 1988, I was enjoying the bloom of new love. I had moved in with the woman I was later to marry, and I had brought my two cats, Beezer and Tasha, to our new home, and had adopted a pair of brothers from a friend of mine who couldn't keep them any more, the boys named Monty and DeMoios. All four of these wonderful friends are no longer with me. However, a few months after we started building our lives together, my future wife brought home a souvenir just before the new year of 1989.

It was a horrible winter, the coldest and snowiest winter I have seen in Kansas. One afternoon, in the middle of what was for all practical purposes a blizzard, I was awakened by my girlfriend coming home and pulling a mewing little black ball of fluff from her coat.

This scrawny and smelly little kitten had been trapped inside of a dumpster at a fast-food place, one of those big things that the garbage truck picks up, hoists overhead and empties, and then places back down on the ground. The kitten was cold and hungry and tired, and he promptly curled up on the bed and took a long nap, after which he jumped down, crawled under the bed, and stunk up the entire house with the smelliest kitten bowel movement in history which instantly saddled him with the name he carries to this day.

Over the years, he became the head of the cat household. He stopped fights, welcomed new family members, suffered dozens of kittens who for some reason liked to try to nurse on his big fat furry black belly, and was always ready to cuddle and purr and bonk faces.

He is the senior member of the household, and at nearly eighteen years of age is still pretty spry and alert, even though he moves more slowly than he used to and probably doesn't have many years left with me.

Meet Stinky, also known as Stinkbug and Uncle Stinky. Of all of the kitties I have known and loved, none have been around for as long as he has, and I fear that our time left together is drawing to its inevitable end. He has been a wonderful friend and companion, and I have learned a lot from his quiet thoughtfulness and his calm self-assurance. May he live many more years and always occupy the center of his favorite sunny spot on the bedroom floor.